Friday, December 16, 2011

69th Golden Globe Awards (2012) Foreign Film Nominees

Yesterday, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announced the nominees for this year's 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards.  The ceremony hosted by Ricky Gervais will be held on Sunday, January 15, 2012 starting at 20:00 EST at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.

I know every blog and their dog has already posted the same copy pasted list so I'll spare you all that and just talk about the category this blog is primarily concerned with, the Foreign Language Film category.

Since 1986, when the category was changed from Best Foreign Film to Best Foreign Language Film, up until last years awards (24 years), the winner of the Golden Globe has also won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film on ten occasions (42% of the time).  Those titles were:  
  • The Assault (1986)
  •  Pelle the Conqueror (1988)
  • Cinema Paradiso (1989)
  • Indochine (1992)
  • Kolya (1996) 
  • All About My Mother (1999)
  • Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
  • No Man's Land (2001)
  • The Sea Inside (2004)
  • In A Better World (2010)

The five official nominees for the 2012 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film are:
The Flowers of War / Jing Ling Shi San Chai / 金陵十三钗
China, 145 min.
Zhang Yimou
New Pictures Film Company; Wrekin Hill Entertainment
In the Land of Blood and Honey
USA, 127 min.
Angelina Jolie
GK Films; FilmDistrict
The Kid With A Bike / Le gamin au vélo
Belgium, 87 min.
Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Les Films du Fleuve; Sundance Selects
A Separation / Jodaeiye Nader az Simin / جدایی نادر از سیمین
Iran, 123 min.
Asghar Farhadi
Sony Pictures Classics
The Skin I Live In / La piel que habito
Spain, 117 min.
Pedro Almodóvar
El Deseo D.A., S.L.U.; Sony Pictures Classics

Not really a surprise that they nominated a couple films with Hollywood names attached, Angelina Jolie's Bosnian war drama, In the Land of Blood and Honey, and Zhang Yimou's The Flowers of War, a Chinese film about the Rape of Nanking starring Christian Bale.  Along with three of my favorites of the year rounding out the selections, Belgium's The Kid with a Bike, Iran's A Separation, and Spain's The Skin I Live In.   I'm pretty sure A Separation will win, but one of the two I haven't seen may have an outside chance.

The rest of the official nominees for the 2012 Golden Globe Awards can be found here.

11 comments:

Bonjour Tristesse said...

I wondered about that as well, and I have my serious doubts, but I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the film.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Me too.  But I'd love for The Kid with a Bike to somehow sneak in there.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Interesting.  He should have shown up in full costume :)

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Yeah it would be interesting to see what kind of lobbying is made behind the scenes for these awards.  Some of the strange picks make me believe that they don't simply judge a film by it's artistic merits.

Bonjour Tristesse said...

Good to see you are catching up with the foreign titles.

d_4 said...

I was wondering what Angelina Jolie was doing in a foreign language category.. so I googled it. She wrote AND directed? This is new, I actually wonder if she's any good there. First attempts and all.

Hoi-Ming Ng said...

Christian Bale, eh? I hear he got punched in the face by Chinese police today.

CS said...

I think it will be between A Separation (heard fantastic things at TIFF, tried to get a ticket but the both screenings sold out) and The Skin I Live In (watched last night).  Both seem to be going back and forth in regards to splitting the critics awards so far.

FrontRoomCinema said...

Yeay for the NOD for The Skin I Live In!! I should have that when I get home.... Christmas post depending!

I am going to watch A Seperation today hopefully...

Oh and I finally saw Incendies last night... that was a smack in the chops....

NeverTooEarlyMP said...

Great post! (And thanks for not just repeating the lists.). As I look back at their past nominees in this category, it's interesting to me that while they've only gotten the winner 42%, they often pick films that get nominations in other categories, like I Am Love for Costumes, Biutiful for actor, The White Ribbon for cinematography, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Pan's Labyrinth, Letters from Iwo Jima, etc.... I'm too new to know whether these were all guarantees even without HPFA's help, but there does seem to be something about being high enough on the radar to get noticed. Or maybe just being at the party enables these films to campaign--and over drinks!

And more and more I'm thinking that A Separation has this in the bag. 

365 moviesandsongs365 said...

I have yet to see any of the 5 nominees, but I actually want to catch most of them before I post my top 10 films from 2011 list. No nomination for Melancholia is a surprise, but then again Lars Von Trier maybe is too controversial for the oscars
Cinema Paradiso is very good, if you haven't seen it, just skip the extended directors cut, which I found a bit overlong.

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